Israeli picture stock company Visual Photos Ltd. has set up a joint venture in Moscow with Russian content syndication company MediaRight Ltd., which until now has focused on music licensing. The new office is located in Red Square.
Visual Photos represents most major international stock brands and agencies and it has 4.5 million rights-managed and royalty-free images. It is also the exclusive Corbis representative in Israel.
Visual Photos president Erez Miller said in response, "Expansion into Russia has created a significant opportunity for the company. The Russian market is growing at a dizzying pace. Advertisers spent $7 billion in Russia in 2006, rising to $9 billion in 2007, and it is projected to rise to $11 billion in 2008. The television advertising market is the largest ad market in Russia. While TV takes the lion’s share of ad spending, print spending in Russia is predicted to increase, which is contrary to the flat or decreasing ad spending in most of the world, and the Russian print magazine readership is still growing."
MediaRight CEO Sergey Skorupa said that the company has long wanted to diversify into photo and video distribution. “The Visual Photos platform, including the back-office management software, is exactly what we needed,” he said.
Viktor Maslov, the manager of the new office, previously handled the image database for Russian daily "Kommersant".
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on July 3, 2008
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